This get-together has been over 5 years in the making (we had never met in person), so Michael Port and I decided to film us chatting about one of our biggest online pet peeves: being asked to speak on telesummits. Have a look:

The moral of the story is: Get to know people before pretending you know them. Do you have any stories of being approached or trying to run a telesummit? Do you have rules on what ones you’d speak for? Let us know in the comments!

Michael has a new version of his famous Book Yourself Solid program coming out. See that link in the last sentence? It’s not even an affiliate one. I don’t make a cent off of you signing up and improving your business. Michael is the best there is and I’m happy to spread the word, proud to call him a friend and gitty I got to finally hang out with him.

Please stop.

You’re steering people the wrong way.

You sell yourself as social media consultants, the ones that can show you the way and then fark it up.

I beg of you to stop.

Go back to teaching Internet marketing from the old days, I could at least ignore you then. I talk to you at conferences, share the stage but I can’t listen to you up there any longer spewing “tips” that hurt people and their relationships.

Here is what I and many, if not most of the world, request of you to stop immediately when teaching “Facebook Strategy”:

Photo by the awesome Racheal McCaig

1. Stop telling people to invite everyone in their contact list to every event, even if it’s local. If you invite me to your 1 hour workshop at the library in New Mexico, and I live in Toronto, it hurts my view of you and questions your geography skills

2. Stop teaching people to create fake events. You know what I’m talking about… it’s the “month long event” that you say people should create, and then they “message” all the “no’s and maybe’s” and “not yet responded” to continue to pump out their message. It makes me feel all unfriendy. (yes, that’s unfriendy)

3. You know that trick of tagging people in articles/pics/videos that they don’t appear in so they come and read it? Stop it. Getting me to think I’m mentioned somewhere just to find out I’m not and you’re just being a selfish bumhole, does not bode well for our future “friend” status on the book of faces.

4. Inviting me to a “loss weight” teleseminar event, where it lists people you’ve invited is like being on a roll call at fat camp. Really? Do I look fat in these jogging pants? I know a lot of people are overweight, but inviting someone to an event to lose that weight, especially when I’m perfectly happy living my life of denial, does not strengthen our relationship.

And while we’re here, can you start teaching your clients:

1. Inviting me to assassinate someone in the temple in Mafia Wars may give off the wrong vibe for your brand… I don’t know about you, but I like to be a sniper in the privacy of my own Xbox, not regular updates on my wall of whose neck I’ve cracked

2. Hundreds of Farmville updates on your wall doesn’t make me think you’ll focus on my needs if I become your client. Especially if you’re positioned as a “busy” person, and your status update says “I have no time!!!” And yet we can read how you just nursed a sickly cat on your farm in FarmVille, well, um, it’s just awkward.

3. Blingee generic mass-sent greeting animated cards make people go nuts. Before turning off and blocking the app, I had 43 posted on my wall. In 4 hours. Nothing says “I thought of you personally” like a mass sent lame greeting self-serving wall post. “Hey Scott, if you don’t like the app, you can just turn it off” Well, I didn’t ask you, but if you insist, that’s like me having to tell people to stop kicking me in the nuts. It should be opt-in, not opt-out.

If you’re going to be in the position of an expert, act like one.

Teach people that really, truly want to know how to do things in social media properly. Show them how to:

1. Connect with people on an authentic, not automated level.

2. Show them that with time and effort, you can meet the greatest people in the world on sites like Twitter, if they only would only invest their time, care and knowledge first.

3. That “success” is subjective, not a number of friends/followers. If by success you mean some of the most incredible relationships you’ve ever had, that once trust is established can also lead to a fruitful business, you can have it within social media.

4. Tell them to treat others like they would like to be treated. That sending repeat invites weekly to your event on Facebook would really really suck if they had 20 people doing it to them every week, and that promoting others is sometimes better than promoting yourself.

5. And warn them, that us, the self-appointed guards of social media are very protective, very persistent and aren’t goin anywhere.

There you have it my fellow social media teachers. I’m sure we’ll get along fine with just these small but meaningful changes.

Love you.

Sincerely,

The entire Internet

(As a special treat, I also made this into a song for you. With apologies to Heart)

UPDATE – Thanks to the awesome @SnipeyHead here is a post on how to get rid of most of this annoying schtuff by using FaceBook Lite

I can haz ur passwerd?

Heeeere phishy phishy phishy! (to quote the great Ernie from Sesame Street)

Like anything that gets popular, there are unruly folk out there trying to fark up our fun. Lately its been attacks against the fine people in Twittertown.

Phishing is nothing new. It happened years ago with emails from Paypal, eBay, your bank etc that mentions you must go “RIGHT NOW” to this website to do something for your account or it would be terminated/explode/massive bum rash if you didn’t. (btw, phishing isn’t “hacking”. No one is sweating for hours, banging out code trying to get into your account)

Phishing is “the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.” (via Wikipedia.)

This is what happens on a Twitter phishing expedition:

1. You get a Direct Message from someone you follow:
2. Being the narcissistic ego-maniacs “self-interested” people that we are, we obviously want to see what great video we may be in (or not-so-great) so we click on the link
3. Up pops a login screen asking for your Twitter name and password
4. People thinking it’s something to do with Twitter, they login
5. SET THE HOOK!!! You’ve now been phished.
6. The people who now have your login info use it to send other people DM’s with the same trick
7. A little while later they start sending out spam notices like this:

Now it looks like you are raving about the $19 you made using Google, etc, and you are none the wiser until you start getting DM replies back from “friends” with gems like “WTF??” and “SPAMMER!!! BURN HER!!”

So this is where I ask you to go easy on your fellow Twits. I know people should be vigilant in checking URL’s and not giving away their private information but the kicker about phishing through DM’s on Twitter is that they leverage trust from people. The wording is so basic and innocent, I’ve even clicked on them (See kids, this is called being transparent in a blog). Now I haven’t given my info to any of them, but that’s because I spend more time online than a 15 year old who just hit puberty so I’ve dealt with this stuff all the time.

What to do if you have been phished

1. Change your password. No one got access to your account because you used your pet’s name as your password (you do don’t you??). It doesn’t matter how crafty you’ve made it, if you hand them your login info, it’s like they’re psychic like John Edward, except they actually know stuff
2. Check who has access to your account by going here. It shows who you have authorized to use your account. Now don’t crap the bed if there are companies listed there. I have 18 apps that have access to my account for various reasons. But if you don’t recognize one and want to yank them out, just click “revoke access”.
3. Stop giving your info out! You should never give your info to any site that asks for it unless you are wanting them to. It’s your reputation/business here. Giving out your login to anyone is like wearing your bank card PIN on your t shirt and wandering the back streets of Vegas at 3am. Not saying I’ve done that…. ummm…

So if someone sends you a DM that is out of character, be nice, reply back to them that they should change their password. It could happen to you, you’d already feel bad enough and could probably use a helpful reply

Thoughts? Comment below!

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